


inheritance

by elliott



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, i promise i love u, sorry aaron :(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 05:45:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14278170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliott/pseuds/elliott
Summary: Derek Lycan — father, husband and CEO of Lycan Industries — is declared clinically dead at 7:23pm.Aaron Lycan — son, ex-boyfriend and upcoming CEO of Lycan Industries — is left to deal with the aftermath.





	inheritance

**Author's Note:**

> so i was rewatching mystreet and i was thinking “i wish derek would just die” and i was like “oh i could just write it” so here i am  
> this takes place sometime around lover's lane ep 24/25, so aphmau and aaron are still broken up and aaron is home, but rachel hasn’t taken aaron’s phone yet.  
> also: warnings for death (only derek), past child abuse/neglect, and mentions of self harm/alcohol.
> 
> with that out of the way, please enjoy this character study-adjacent angst fest!

Aaron’s life changes with a phone call.  
He's out getting coffee when his phone rings, and world shifts around him ever so slightly as he reaches for it. There's an urgency he can feel as he picks it up, like the way the air hangs heavier before a storm.  
“Hello?” He answers, and on the other line, he hears Melissa.  
“Aaron? Aaron, something happened with dad...”  
Aaron is out of the door of the coffee shop before he can even order, not that it was really the reason he was there. It’s a bit ironic reflecting on it, but originally he had gone out to avoid Derek. When Melissa had told him he’d promised to come home for dinner tonight, he was as anxious as he was unconvinced. He figured he’d linger outside the house for a while, and claim traffic as he caught the tail end of Derek’s arrival, only enough time for some small talk and a nod, perhaps a disapproving glare if Derek’s in the mood. If Derek were to even show up, that is. He’s not exactly a man of his word.  
And now here Aaron is, hands anxiously gripping the wheel of his car as he consoles a panicked Melissa through a phone he has propped between his shoulder and his cheek.  
“We’re at the hospital, please come, dad is…”  
Aaron can’t hear the rest of her sentence over the ringing in his ears.  
“I’ll be right there.”  
He hangs up.

Aaron is to the hospital in exactly three minutes.  
He awkwardly makes his way through the doors, wondering where he’s supposed to go from here. He’s never really been to a hospital before, unless you count the first aid kit in his bathroom, which he obviously doesn’t.  
He’s just starting to consider asking an employee and completely embarrassing himself in front of them since he knows absolutely nothing about the rules of hospital socialization when Melissa appears, waving him over.  
He hurries over, somewhat stumbling over himself, running off some weird cocktail of emotions that he doesn’t have the time to unpack at the moment.  
“Mom’s here. Dad’s in ER.” Melissa’s eyes are dull and tired, bags under her eyes almost as black as the polish on her nails. She looks on the verge of tears, but she doesn’t cry. When they were younger, Derek had told them that Lycans don’t cry.  
“What… happened?”  
“I don’t know. He just entered the house, and he was taking off his jacket, and he asked where you were, and he was about to sit down and he just… fell. I tried to talk to him, but he was unresponsive, and then Mom came rushing over, and…” Melissa inhales sharply. Takes a beat. Exhales. “We just… picked him up and drove. Where were you?”  
Aaron’s mouth is dry. He knows it’s not his fault, but when it comes to Derek, it kind of feels like everything’s his fault. “I went to get coffee. And there was… y’know. Traffic.”  
Melissa nods slightly. If she can tell he’s lying, she doesn’t say so, she just beckons him the the ER wing. They walk side by side, and there’s a million things Aaron wants to say, but he opens his mouth and no words come out.  
Before he can figure out how to speak, they’re already in front of the disheveled form of Rachel Lycan. She stands on shaky legs in front of the door to a hospital room that Aaron can only assume holds Derek.  
“Mom,” He greets, and his voice is a little too choked up for his liking.  
“Son,” She replies, more steadily than he would guess based on her appearance. “You can… go in, if you want. You should… see him.”  
Aaron enters the room quietly, breath shallow, hands shaking. The heart monitor’s beeps create a stressful symphony in collaboration with the ringing in his ears. Aaron approaches the bed slowly, carefully, like it’s a threat, and digs his fingers into his palms as he beholds the unconscious form of his father. He almost says something, but concludes there'd be no point.  
He breathes in and out, slowly, steadily, his thoughts breaking through his erratic heartbeat with a newfound clarity. He stands for just a moment before turning around and leaving as doctors and nurses rush in to take Derek’s vitals or… whatever. He thinks they're saying something, but he can't hear them.  
That is the last time Aaron Lycan sees the living body of Derek Lycan.

They receive the news a while later. Derek Lycan — father, husband and CEO of Lycan Industries — is declared clinically dead at 7:23pm. A heart attack, the doctors say. Or at least, Aaron’s pretty sure they said that. His ears are still ringing.  
Rachel just stands up and leaves. She turns on her heel and drags her grief-wracked form out of sight. Aaron doubts that she knows where she’s going, she just wants to be gone.  
Melissa’s eyes widen as her hand flies to her mouth. She’s sputtering and shaking and at a loss for words, and leaves in a different direction than Rachel did.  
Aaron, unlike Melissa, isn’t at a loss for words. Or a loss for a word, he supposes, since he can only say one.  
“Oh.”  
The doctor says something else, but it’s all static to him now.

The funeral is a week later. It’s all black suits and hollow condolences and Aaron hates it. He holds on to Melissa’s arm like he used to when he was a kid, and he doesn’t let go.  
“Derek will be dearly missed,” Rachel declares. Aaron pulls at the hem of his suit collar, limbs stiff like a doll, dressed up and propped up and posed to tell you how good of a man the foundation of his unrelenting misery was.  
The Ro’meaves are there. He's never seen Garroth in a suit before, and he looks a different kind of refined. Under any other circumstances, he'd consider it a good-different.  
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Garroth tells him, and he sounds truly sorry. “I can't imagine how hard it must be for you.”  
Aaron has never heard Garroth say anything that sincere in his entire life, but maybe he's just never seen him in a situation where he has to be before.  
“Thank you,” Aaron replies. He knows Garroth can't imagine, because he loves his parents so much that he doesn't have to falsify his emotions.  
Aaron doesn't have that luxury, and now he's stuck dealing with feeling bad for not feeling bad. It's far too paradoxical and melancholy for his liking, but faking is all he has ever known, so he fakes it.  
Aaron gives a sugar-coated eulogy, and the words taste sickly sweet and artificial coming from his mouth. He drinks a glass of wine to wash it out later; two glasses, three, four, and then his head’s in his hands and there’s tears in his eyes and Melissa’s driving him back to the house.  
If Derek could see him now, he’d be thoroughly disappointed. Lycans don’t cry, especially not drunk in the passenger seat of their older sister’s car.  
But Derek’s dead now, so he shouldn’t care. (He does, though. He can’t help it, but he’s sorry. The guilt spreads throughout him with each tear that falls and he’s begging for the forgiveness of a man that has neither forgiveness nor life within him.)

The Lycan household grows into a familiar silence, but it feels so different now.  
Rachel doesn’t talk to him anymore, and spends most of her time in Derek’s study with the door locked. Melissa talks to him, but it’s all soft spoken reassurance that can be even more infuriating than the silence.  
“Are you okay?” She asks him.  
“Yeah,” He says, and the lie leaves his lips effortlessly. “I am.”  
The house is empty, now.  
Not in the way it used to be, where Aaron would come home and call out and his greeting would go unanswered by the vacant house. Not in the way it used to be, where Aaron would lean over the bathroom sink and re apply bandages to his wounds and cry because Derek wasn't there to see. Not in the way it used to be, where Aaron would sit at the couch, the pages of homework laying by his side long forgotten, picking away at a bowl of instant ramen and glancing at the door forlornly every few minutes wondering if anyone was coming home tonight. Wondering when his next full meal would be. Wondering when this cycle of suffering would end.  
Now they’re just ghosts, floating around and mourning the loss of a man that was never around in the first place. Nothing has changed, Aaron thinks bitterly. But somehow, everything has.

He checks his phone, eventually. It's stupid, but he’s kind of afraid that if he picks up another call, it'll be another bout of bad news. He is so afraid these days.  
There's a mountain of unanswered texts. There's a few from Melissa, but she seemed to stop texting him when she realized that he hasn't been answering.  
There's a missed called and a handful of texts from Aphmau, a couple from Garroth, even one from Laurance and Travis. He’ll deal with the latest one from Aphmau first.

[November 29th]  
Aphmau [1:32pm]: I heard the news. Are you alright???  
[December 6th]  
Aaron [2:23pm]: Hey. Sorry I took a long time to get back to this.  
Aaron [2:23pm]: I’m fine.  
Aphmau [2:27pm]: Ok! I was just worried.  
Aaron [2:28pm]: It’s fine, really. I just need some time.  
Aphmau [2:28pm]: Of course.  
Aphmau [2:29pm]: Just text if you need anything, okay?  
Aaron [2:31pm]: Thank you, Aph.

It late occurs to him that this is the first conversation that they've had since they broke up. Aphmau is probably already going through enough without him being another burden on everyone around him.  
So if he doesn't text it's totally, 100% because he is, in fact, fine. Not because of anything else.  
Totally.

Being in his childhood bedroom is a bad kind of weird. Far too many memories live here, spectres of a version of him that died long before Derek ever did.  
The desk in his drawer is still filled to the brim with crumpled up paper containing unfinished doodles and unsigned letters.  
He can see the long-forgotten figure of a boy who knew what he would tell his father at his deathbed out of the corner his eyes, like a broken-off shard of himself reflecting a lost youthfulness back at him. He can see himself here, younger, and he's crying and his wrists are bleeding and— he looks down at his scars. Closes his eyes. Breathes In. Breathes out. Compartmentalizes. Moves On.  
Once in the confines of this room, he had made a plan. He had a script. Derek would be old and dying, and Aaron would finally tell him all the pain he caused him and how much better his life will be without him and how he will walk his own path through life in an Oscar-worthy epic monologue.  
And maybe, just maybe, in his final moments, Derek would realize that he made a mistake, and regret it, and Aaron would win.  
It doesn't feel like he's won now. He feels like he's lost.  
What even were his last words to Derek? He can't remember. It was probably an unremarkable goodbye from his last visit a month ago.  
Maybe he could've actually said something to him before he died, but he had ran, because he was scared. It's a hard thing to swallow, the fear, a feeling that shaped him so fundamentally. He still feels it now, lingering like a hand around his throat.  
He doesn't know why he feels this way. Derek is dead now, and being afraid of a dead man makes no sense, yet here he is.  
He didn't deserve to see him one last time. Whether that means he's too good or not good enough, he can't decide. He’s never been good at specifics.

Aaron is a heir, even though he'd rather be anything but.  
Even though Rachel spends her days in Derek’s study tying up the loose ends, Aaron has to deal with the aftermath. Because it's his turn to become Mr. Lycan now. Lycan Industries needs a new CEO, and Derek has left it to Aaron. How lucky.  
When Rachel talks to him about it in their first conversation in basically eternity, it's Aaron’s turn to lock himself in his room.  
“You can't just cower and hide,” Rachel tells him, the venom in her voice muffled by the door. “We are your family. This is your purpose.”  
Fuck his purpose, perhaps.  
So he stays in his room, mourns the death of a time that was no better and man who hated him, and cowers and hides in spite of Rachel’s biting criticisms.  
Melissa brings him food; looks at him with a mixture of pride and envy, and Aaron doesn't agree with the people who say those are sins because she deserves to feel them.  
Melissa should be the rightful heir to the Lycan throne, even if it was built on Irene-knows-what. Derek was a man of many secrets and few answers. And even after death, his thought process eludes Aaron’s comprehension. Melissa deserves this.  
He has spent his entire life being trained for this, but it doesn't feel like a prize. It feels like a shackle, and he will reject it.

Soon enough, the DEREK LYCAN nameplate is replaced with MELISSA LYCAN, and Rachel never looks at Aaron again without the same disappointment Derek used to look at him with.

Melissa throws a party, one of the fancy ones that Aaron used to observe Derek and Rachel throwing when he was a kid. (From a safe distance, of course. Derek had told him to make sure he didn't mess it all up.)  
So Aaron puts on his best suit, showers, reinvents himself in an act of subtle defiance.  
He hasn't been able to hold down wine since the night of Derek’s funeral, which is a tally in the long list of ways in which Derek has ruined something, so instead he makes idle small talk and watches how effortlessly Melissa slots into the role of Ms. Lycan (from a safe distance, of course).  
She flourishes in this environment, and he is so happy for her.

The tension in the house between him and Rachel becomes too much, so Aaron finds an apartment nearby. Melissa loans him some money, though it isn't really a loan because she insists that he shouldn't pay her back.  
“It's a thank you,” She tells him with a warm smile. He silently vows to pay her back someday.  
The café leaves a bad taste in his mouth, so he starts looking for another job. Melissa says he could work for her, if he wants.  
“I’d be happy to have you.”  
“Sorry, Melissa, but I think I've had my fill of Lycan Industries.”  
She laughs. He does too, and it's the first time he's laughed in weeks, and it feels good.

“Are you okay?” Melissa asks him.  
“Yeah,” He answers. “I am.”  
And for once, it's the truth.

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on tumblr @ptsdaaron


End file.
